May 8-10, 2014
A second IARC seminar on the conservation of indigenous collections was organized in May 2014 to address major outcomes of the 2013 seminar. During the first seminar, discussions among conservators, tribal museum leaders, artists, curators, and collections managers centered on the deep changes in the field of conservation and other collections-based work over the past two decades. It was agreed that as conservation becomes increasingly collaborative with, or led by, source communities and individuals, the need for a resource that can help in the planning and implementation of this work has become critically important. As a result, 2014 seminar participants developed the first draft of a set of ethical and practical guidelines for collaborative conservation work including the documentation of collections, the conservation decision-making process and treatments. Work continues on the editing of the guidelines with the intention of a future publication.
The second outcome of the 2013 seminar addresses the need for more exposure to conservation and other collections-based museum work as a potential career path for Native students. This is particularly important at this point in time as museums holding Native collections are evolving an increasingly collaborative and inclusive working process. At the same time, numbers of tribal museums are on the rise. The idea of organizing community workshops about collaborative collections conservation and other collections-based museum work was discussed among the 2013 seminar participants and enthusiastically developed during the second seminar.
Planning for the pilot workshop will commence in fall 2014 with a third seminar.
Participants
Tony Chavarria is the curator of ethnology at the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture/Laboratory of Anthropology in Santa Fe, New Mexico. A graduate of University of Colorado at Denver, he was the first Branigar Intern at the School of American Research in Santa Fe. Tony has served as secretary and board member for the Council for Museum Anthropology, and a board member for the Committee on Practicing, Applied and Public Interest Anthropology, both sections of the American Anthropological Association. He has contributed to the publications A River Apart: The Pottery of Cochiti and Santo Domingo Pueblos, Painting a Native World: Life, Land and Animals and Here, Now and Always: Voices of the Native Southwest. Among the exhibitions he has curated are the traveling exhibition Comic Art Indigene and Heartbeat: Music of the Native Southwest. He also served as a community liaison and curator for the inaugural Pueblo exhibition at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington. DC. He resides and abides at Santa Clara Pueblo.
Martina Dawley (Hualapai/Navajo) is completing a PhD in American Indian studies, with a focus in museum studies at the University of Arizona. She was recently hired at the Arizona State Museum (ASM) to manage the American Indian Relations program. Upon completion of her dissertation she will advance to a faculty position at ASM. Her dissertation research specifically focuses on finding out how many American Indians are professional conservators and investigating the factors that determine this number. She was awarded scholarships from the Indigenous Material Institute and the Hualapai Department of Education. She earned her M.A. in American Indian studies (2009) and her B.A. in anthropology with a minor in geology (2006) at the University of Arizona. She became interested in museums, especially the field of conservation, while working at ASM as a McNair Scholar (2006-2008).
Laura Elliff (Seminar Co-Facilitator) has been the collections manager at the Indian Arts Research Center (IARC) of the School for Advanced Research (SAR) since 2008. Since May/2014, she has been acting director at the IARC. Originally from Oklahoma and a member of the Choctaw Nation, Laura has worked in the museum field since 2004 with passions in both collections care and working with local tribal communities on collaborative projects. Previously, she worked at the Center of Southwest Studies (CSWS) at Fort Lewis College in Durango, CO. She has a B.A. in Anthropology; a graduate certificate in “Museum Collections Management and Care,” and an M.A. in American Studies.
Jim Enote
Zuni farmer and interrupted artist, Jim is a man of many interests, skills, endeavors and accomplishments.
Jim is the director of the A:shiwi A:wan Museum and Heritage Center in Zuni, New Mexico and the director of the Colorado Plateau Foundation. He serves on the boards of the Grand Canyon Trust and Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation and he is a senior advisor for Mountain Cultures at the Mountain Institute. He is a National Geographic Society Explorer; a New Mexico Community Luminaria; and an E.F. Shumacher Society Fellow.
In 2013 he received the Guardian of Culture and Lifeways Award from the Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums, and in 2010 during the American Anthropological Association’s annual meeting was awarded the first Michael Ames Prize for Innovative Museum Anthropology.
Born in Zuni, New Mexico, he is still camped out there at his work-in-progress home.
Dominic Henry is a citizen of the Navajo Nation his family is from New Mexico and Washington, D.C. He earned his second M.A. in Historic Preservation (2013) focus on architectural conservation and planning from Clarence Thomas Preservation Center- School of Building Arts + Architecture, Savannah College of Art + Design. While attending SCAD, he received a restoration certificate from the International Institute for Restoration and Preservation in San Gemini, Provincia di Terni- Italy, where he studied material science of frescoes and urban planning. He trained with various conservators, planners and architects. He was an architectural facilities fellow at Peabody Essex Museum and Fellow with the National Trust for Historic Preservation. He also worked with DMH Architecture Restoration Firm and Turner Construction. His work involves conservation for archaeological monuments, historic and modern buildings. He joined MIAC in 2014, and works at the institution’s two laboratories.
Jennifer Himmelreich is a graduate student at the School of Library and Information Science, IMLS Circle of Learning, San Jose State University, CA.
Amy G. Johnson is the Collections Management Specialist at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque. A graduate of the University of New Mexico with a BA in Fine Arts, she is from the Pueblo of Isleta. She has co-curated a number of exhibitions at the IPCC and continues to learn from various professionals in the museum field through collaborative projects.
Marian A. Kaminitz has served as the Head of Conservation at the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution since 1991. Her main interests include conservation partnerships with Native American community artists. She was Assistant Conservator in the Anthropology Department at the American Museum of Natural History, New York from 1985 – 1991. From 1988 – 1998 she was an Adjunct Professor of Conservation at the New York University’s Conservation Center, teaching a course in the conservation of organic ethnographic and archaeological objects. She received a Masters of Science in the Conservation of Artistic and Historic Works from the University of Delaware/Winterthur Museum Program in Art Conservation in 1984. She was an Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship at the Pacific Regional Conservation Center, Bishop Museum in Honolulu, HI from 1984 to 1985. She served as the Coordinator for the Ethnographic Working Group of ICOM-CC from 1999-2005 and is currently an assistant coordinator.
Kelly McHugh is an objects conservator at the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI). She began working for the museum in 1996 in New York, based at the museum’s former storage facility in the Bronx. There she participated in a survey of the over 800,000 objects in NMAI’s collection, prior to the collections move to the Cultural Resources Center (CRC) in Maryland. She currently cares for the collection and works to prepare objects for exhibits at NMAI-DC and NMAI-NY at the CRC. She specializes in evolving the Conservation Department’s collaborative conservation methodology and in caring for the museum’s contemporary art collection.
Nancy Odegaard
Conservator of material culture and advocate for lifelong learning
Nancy is the Head of the Preservation Division at the Arizona State Museum on the campus of the University of Arizona and is a professor with the Department of Material Science & Engineering, the School of Anthropology, and the Drachman Institute (historic preservation). She leads the effort to preserve the collections of the museum through loans, exhibits, excavations, research, storage, and repatriation; she teaches students; provides outreach services; conducts research related to conservation; and has had major projects involving pottery, human remains, basketry, textiles, and pesticide residues.
Born in Minnesota, she was raised in Arizona, studied for a BA in California with a year abroad in Paris. After some work in museums she completed a MA at GWU and Smithsonian in Washington DC, and later a PhD in Australia. She gained early conservation experience at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museo Ixchel in Guatemala, Smithsonian Museum of Natural History and the Peabody Museum at Harvard. She has been a Fulbright Scholar (1991, 2001), Winterthur Research Fellow (2000), and Getty GCI Scholar (2007). She is a Fellow of the AIC and IIC and received a US Department of Justice Commendation Award (2000), AIC Keck Award (2009) and the AIC Advocacy Award (2013).
Sylvanus Paul is the Collections Assistant at the Indian Arts Research Center (IARC) of the School for Advanced Research (SAR) in Santa Fe, NM. He is from Pine Hill, NM, of the Ramah Navajo Reservation. Sylvanus attended Diné College in Tsaile, AZ; his focus on Diné Studies. He is an alumni of Fort Lewis College in Durango, CO, with a major in American Indian Studies and a minor in Southwest History. Sylvanus has interned at Mesa Verde National Park, being trained on maintaining the longevity of their archaeological items. Sylvanus continued to work for the Park Service with collections care for Chaco Canyon Historical Park.
Ellen Pearlstein is an associate professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, teaching in Information Studies and in the UCLA/Getty Program in Archaeological and Ethnographic Conservation. In her latter capacity, Ellen is presently working with weavers in southern CA, the Agua Caliente Cultural Museum in CA and the Hibulb Cultural Center in WA, involving them in graduate conservation education. Her research interests include American Indian tribal museums and how museum staff defines cultural preservation; effects of environmental agents on ethnographic and natural history materials; introducing context into cultural materials’ conservation education; and curriculum development. She is co-director of the UCLA and Getty Conservation Institute feather research. project.
Elysia Poon is the program coordinator for the Indian Arts Research Center at the School for Advanced Research (SAR) in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her responsibilities include public programming, education and outreach, and overseeing the Native artist, intern, and volunteer programs. Prior to SAR, Elysia worked for the Autry National Center in Los Angeles, Museum of Indian Arts and Culture in Santa Fe, and Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque. Throughout her career, she has curated and produced educational content for both online and traditional museum exhibits. She holds an MA in art history from the University of New Mexico
Landis Smith (Seminar Co-Facilitator) is currently Project Conservator, Museums of New Mexico Conservation Unit, Santa Fe, NM and Research Associate, National Museum of the American Indian Conservation Department. She was previously Anchorage Project Conservator at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History; Project Conservator at the Museums of New Mexico; and Conservator, Department of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History, NY. Since 1989, much of her career has been focused on ways to carry out collaborative documentation and conservation work with indigenous artists, elders, tribal leaders, scientists and other experts. Her work includes the development and organization, in collaboration with NMAI, of a community-based educational program in New Mexico for NMAI Conservation fellows, interns and staff. Areas of collaborative research include Pueblo pottery, Southwest Native silver jewelry and Alaska Native material culture. Landis serves on several non-profit boards including the Board of Trustees for the Haak’u Museum at Acoma Pueblo.
Mina Thompson received her Masters of Arts and Certificate in Objects Conservation at Buffalo State College in 1998 and has been the Associate Conservator for the Museums of New Mexico since 1999. In New Mexico she has worked collaboratively on conserving Puebloan and ancestral Puebloan cultural material, as well as Spanish Colonial devotional material. She began a survey of archaeological ceramic vessels at the Laboratory of Anthropology along with Landis Smith, and will be assisting Ms. Smith on a pottery conservation project that is collaborative with potters, scholars and tribal representatives. Whenever possible, Ms. Thompson endeavors to work with the makers, cultural representatives, artists and scholars regarding the preservation of their cultural material.
Prior to the Museum of New Mexico, Ms. Thompson interned at the Brooklyn Museum of Art under the direction of Ellen Pearlstein, at the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, on the Poggio Colla Excavations in Italy, and at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Cynthia Chavez Lamar, Facilitator
Laura Elliff, Facilitator
Landis Smith, Facilitator
Jae R. Anderson
Tony Chavarria
Martina Dawley
Jim Enote
Dominic Henry
Jennifer Himmelreich
Amy G. Johnson
Marian A. Kaminitz
Kelly McHugh
Nancy Odegaard
Sylvanus Paul
Ellen Pearlstein
Elysia Poon
Mina Thompson
Conservation seminar participants: (left to right, front row) Martina Dawley, Kelly McHugh, Jim Enote, Mina Thompson, Jennifer Himmelreich; (left to right, back row) Elysia Poon, Sylvanus Paul, Dominic Henry, Jae Anderson, Landis Smith, Nancy Odegaard, Amy Johnson, Marian Kaminitz, Laura Elliff, Tony Chavarria. Not pictured: Ellen Pearlstein who Skyped in on the seminar.
Photo courtesy Jennifer Day, School for Advanced Research
November 13–14, 2014
The second outcome and the topic of Conservation Seminar III was the planning of a pilot workshop; the workshop is inextricably tied to the Guidelines project and also addresses the need for more education and sharing of methods for carrying out collaborative collections work. Specifically, seminar participants proposed holding regional workshops with partner institutions where conservators would conduct workshops focused on collaborative conservation methods. To that end, a pilot workshop is scheduled for this April at the Haakú Museum. Based on discussion during the November planning seminar, this workshop promises to be ground-breaking in a number of ways. Examples of innovative teaching and learning efforts were discussed and developed during the seminar. The workshop is designed for tribal museum staff, conservators from major museums across the United States, conservation interns, and other collections-based museum staff. It is intended that participants will apply what they learn in planning and implementing collaborative work in their own institutions. The workshop will also provide valuable input and feedback on the Guidelines draft.
This inaugural workshop will undergo a thorough evaluation to assess strengths and weaknesses that will be valuable to the planning of future workshops in the Southwest and other regions of the country.
Participants
Martina Dawley (Hualapai/Navajo) is the assistant curator for American Indian Relations at the Arizona State Museum (ASM) at the University of Arizona. She also holds a faculty position at ASM. Martina completed her PhD in American Indian studies, with a focus in museum studies at the University of Arizona. Her dissertation research specifically focuses on finding out how many American Indians are professional conservators and investigating the factors that determine this number. She was awarded scholarships from the Indigenous Material Institute and the Hualapai Department of Education She earned her MA in American Indian studies (2009) and her BA in anthropology with a minor in geology (2006) at the University of Arizona. She became interested in museums, especially the field of conservation, while working at ASM as a McNair Scholar (2006-2008). Martina is Hualapai (enrolled) and Navajo.
Laura Elliff (Seminar Co-Facilitator) is the collections manager at the Denver Art Museum. Originally from Oklahoma and a member of the Choctaw Nation, Laura has worked in the museum field since 2004 with passions in both collections care and working with local tribal communities on collaborative projects. Previously, she was the collections manager at the Indian Arts Research Center (IARC) from 2008 to 2014, assuming the position of acting director in 2014. She also worked at the Center of Southwest Studies (CSWS) at Fort Lewis College in Durango, CO, and has done collections consulting for smaller museums. She has a BA in anthropology; a graduate certificate in “Museum Collections Management and Care,” and an MA in American studies.
Jim Enote – Zuni farmer and interrupted artist, Jim is a man of many interests, skills, endeavors and accomplishments. Jim is the director of the A:shiwi A:wan Museum and Heritage Center in Zuni, New Mexico and the director of the Colorado Plateau Foundation. He serves on the boards of the Grand Canyon Trust and Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation and he is a senior advisor for Mountain Cultures at the Mountain Institute. He is a National Geographic Society Explorer; a New Mexico Community Luminaria; and an E.F. Shumacher Society Fellow. In 2013 he received the Guardian of Culture and Lifeways Award from the Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums, and in 2010, during the American Anthropological Association’s annual meeting, was awarded the first Michael Ames Prize for Innovative Museum Anthropology. Born in Zuni, New Mexico, he is still camped out there at his work-in-progress home.
Cynthia Chavez Lamar (San Felipe Pueblo/Hopi/Tewa/Navajo) is currently assistant director for collections at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI). Prior to her appointment at NMAI, she served as director of the Indian Arts Research Center (IARC) at The School for Advanced Research (SAR) in Santa Fe starting in 2007 until 2014.
Cynthia began her career at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) where she served as an associate curator from 2000–2005. Her major accomplishment during her tenure was leading the development of the inaugural exhibition, Our Lives: Contemporary Life and Identities, which currently remains on exhibit at the NMAI. In 2006, she was recruited to become the museum director at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center (IPCC) in Albuquerque where she revitalized the educational programming and exhibits.
Cynthia received her BA from Colorado College in studio art, and a MA in American Indian Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles. In 2001 she completed her Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of New Mexico with an interdisciplinary focus on Native art history, museum studies, and cultural anthropology. In 2008 she received an honorary doctorate from her alma mater Colorado College, and in 2009 she was appointed by Governor Bill Richardson to the New Mexico Arts Commission. In 2010 she was nominated and appointed by President Barack Obama to the Institute of American Indian Arts Board of Trustees. She has been active in the museum profession for fourteen years, and much of her work focuses on fostering and facilitating collaborations between Native peoples, organizations, and institutions.
Kelly McHugh is an objects conservator at the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI). She began working for the museum in 1996 in New York, based at the museum’s former storage facility in the Bronx. There she participated in a survey of the over 800,000 objects in NMAI’s collection, prior to the collections move to the Cultural Resources Center (CRC) in Maryland. She currently cares for the collection and works to prepare objects for exhibits at NMAI-DC and NMAI-NY at the CRC. She specializes in evolving the Conservation Department’s collaborative conservation methodology and in caring for the museum’s contemporary art collection.
Nancy Odegaard – Conservator of material culture and advocate for lifelong learning. Nancy is the head of the preservation division at the Arizona State Museum on the campus of the University of Arizona and is a professor with the Department of Material Science & Engineering, the School of Anthropology, and the Drachman Institute (historic preservation). She leads the effort to preserve the collections of the museum through loans, exhibits, excavations, research, storage, and repatriation; she teaches students; provides outreach services; conducts research related to conservation; and has had major projects involving pottery, human remains, basketry, textiles, and pesticide residues.
Born in Minnesota, she was raised in Arizona, and studied for a BA in California with a year abroad in Paris. After some work in museums she completed a MA at GWU and Smithsonian in Washington DC, and later a PhD in Australia. She gained early conservation experience at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museo Ixchel in Guatemala, Smithsonian Museum of Natural History and the Peabody Museum at Harvard. She has been a Fulbright Scholar (1991, 2001), Winterthur Research Fellow (2000), and Getty GCI Scholar (2007). She is a Fellow of the AIC and IIC and received a US Department of Justice Commendation Award (2000), AIC Keck Award (2009) and the AIC Advocacy Award (2013).
Jonna Paden (Acoma/Laguna Pueblo) is currently an archives and library intern at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center Library & Archives in Albuquerque where her current emphasis is on archival management. She is a recent graduate from San Jose State University (SJSU) with a Masters in library & information science with a concentration in management, digitization, and preservation of cultural heritage and records (archival studies and records management). A scholar in the SJSU Circle of Learning program to increase the number of American Indian and Alaska Native librarians and archivists, Jonna has attended various conferences including the Association of Tribal Archives, Library and Museum conference as a presenter and participant. An international scholar, she has traveled to Melbourne, Australia to meet with librarians and archivists that work in a range of information centers. Her goal is to become an independent consultant for archives and libraries, particularly those associated with museums.
Sylvanus Paul is the collections assistant at the Indian Arts Research Center (IARC) of the School for Advanced Research (SAR) in Santa Fe, NM. He is from Pine Hill, NM, of the Ramah Navajo Reservation. Sylvanus attended Diné College in Tsaile, AZ; his focus was on Diné studies. He is an alumni of Fort Lewis College in Durango, CO, with a major in American Indian studies and a minor in Southwest history. Sylvanus has interned at Mesa Verde National Park, being trained on maintaining the longevity of their archaeological items. Sylvanus continued to work for the Park Service with collections care for Chaco Canyon Historical Park.
Stephanie Riley is from the Pueblo of Acoma and is the assistant curator at the Sky City Cultural Center & Haakú Museum at Acoma Pueblo. She graduated from New Mexico State University in December 2012 with a BA in anthropology, with concentrations in cultural anthropology and museum studies. In February of 2011, she was presented with the opportunity to work at the NMSU museum as a museum assistant. The following year, in January 2012, she was promoted to public programs coordinator. Since becoming assistant curator at the Sky City Cultural Center & Haakú Museum in March 2013, she has continued learning and growing as an emerging museum professional.
Melvin Sarracino, from the Pueblo of Laguna, attended the Institute of American Indian Arts beginning in the fall of 2006 and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Museum Studies in May of 2009. Later that year, he was hired as the Museum Specialist at the Sky City Cultural Center & Haakú Museum at Acoma Pueblo. At the museum, he has carried out exhibit installations and de-installations, conducted community outreach with guided tours for the youth and adults, as and has utilized best-known methods for collections care.
Melvin is a member of the American Association for State and Local History and the Indian Advisory Panel at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture/Laboratory of Anthropology. As part of his professional development, he accepted a nine-month Anne Ray Internship with the Indian Arts Research Center at the School for Advanced Research (SAR) in Santa Fe.
Landis Smith (Seminar Co-Facilitator) is currently Project Conservator, Museums of New Mexico Conservation Unit, Santa Fe, NM and Research Associate, National Museum of the American Indian Conservation Department. She was previously Anchorage Project Conservator at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History; Project Conservator at the Museums of New Mexico; and Conservator, Department of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History, NY. Since 1989, much of her career has been focused on ways to carry out collaborative documentation and conservation work with American Indian artists, elders, tribal leaders, scientists and other experts. Her work includes the development and organization, in collaboration with NMAI, of a community-based educational program in New Mexico for NMAI conservation fellows, interns and staff. Areas of collaborative research include Pueblo pottery, Southwest Native silver jewelry and Alaska Native collections. Landis serves on several non-profit boards including the board of trustees for the Haakú Museum at Acoma Pueblo.
Brian D. Vallo – A member of the Pueblo of Acoma tribe, Brian has 25 years of experience working with tribal groups throughout the Southwest. A former lieutenant governor, director of historic preservation, and founding director of the Haakú Museum at Acoma, his recent work experience extends into the fields of architecture, planning, and the arts. A self-taught artist (painter and potter), Brian enjoys experimentation with natural materials he discovers on the New Mexico landscape to create mixed media works that celebrate aspects of Acoma and Pueblo culture and history.
Brian attended New Mexico State University where he studied business administration and marketing, and later studied anthropology at the University of New Mexico. His passion for historic and cultural preservation results from his involvement as a tribal leader during the early years of NAGPRA.
Laura Elliff, Facilitator
Landis Smith, Facilitator
Jae R. Anderson
Cynthia Chavez Lamar
Martina Dawley
Jim Enote
Kelly McHugh
Nancy Odegaard
Jonna Paden
Sylvanus Paul
Stephanie Riley
Melvin Sarracino
Brian D. Vallo
Conservation Seminar III participants (left to right): Stephanie Riley, Nancy Odegaard, Jae R. Anderson, Kelly McHugh, Laura Elliff, Jim Enote, Cynthia Chavez Lamar, Brian Vallo, Sylvanus Paul, Landis Smith, Melvin Sarracino, Martina Dawley, Jonna Paden.
Photo courtesy of Jennifer Day, School for Advanced Research